University of Akron: We’re not Closing Multicultural Center

by Diverse Staff

The University of Akron joined a growing list of colleges and universities exercising severe fiscal belt-tightening in the new budget year when it announced this week that 213 staffers were losing their jobs. The university is attempting to offset a reported $40 million deficit.

UVa Grads Sue Rolling Stone Over Retracted Campus Rape Story

by Alan Suderman, Associated Press

Three University of Virginia graduates and members of a fraternity who were portrayed in a debunked account of a gang rape in a retracted Rolling Stone magazine story filed a lawsuit against the publication and the article’s author, court records show.

Feds Accuse Philadelphia Congressman Fattah of Corruption

by Maryclaire Dale, Associated Press

U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah paid off a campaign loan with charitable donations and federal grants, funneled campaign money to pay down his son’s student loan debt and disguised a lobbyist’s bribe as payment for a car he never sold, prosecutors said Wednesday in announcing a racketeering indictment against the congressman.

BCCC in Good Standing; Sojourner-Douglass Loses Accreditation

Diverse Docket: Race Discrimination Suit Still on Table

by Eric Freedman

Borough of Manhattan Community College and the chair of its Business Management Department must continue defending a race discrimination suit by an adjunct professor of Nigerian descent, a federal judge has ruled.

Boston College Under Investigation Over Access for Disabled

by Associated Press

Boston College has become more difficult to navigate for people with disabilities in recent years, according to former and current students whose complaints have prompted an investigation into whether the school is violating accessibility laws.

Diverse Docket: Morehead State Unanimous Winner on Appeal

by Eric Freedman

Morehead State University didn’t violate First Amendment rights or commit disability discrimination when it denied tenure to an assistant professor of art history, a unanimous federal appeals panel has ruled.

Study Links Discrimination, Blacks’ Risk of Mental Disorders

by Catherine Morris

New research shows that African Americans and Caribbean Blacks who experience multiple types of discrimination are at a much greater risk for a variety of mental disorders, such as anxiety, depression and substance abuse.

Exchange Program Expands Horizons of African-American Males

14 members of three fraternities at The Ohio State University (OSU) traveled to China last month, where they choreographed a step show for Chinese students as part of a cross-cultural awareness program funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of State.

Injured Football Player to Return to Towson University

Educators Competing With Athletics for Low-income Students’ Focus

by Lydia Lum

Workshop panelist Nathan Weigl, a doctoral student at Appalachian State University, suggested that recruiting tactics of college coaches can be borrowed and adapted by GEAR UP practitioners and community partners.

Cal State Campuses Preserving Painful Piece of U.S. History

by Lydia Lum

The archives of 15 California State University campuses are collaborating to digitize about 10,000 documents and 100-plus oral histories connected to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Hampton University to Lead Minority Male Health Initiative

Hampton officials say that while the initiative is focused on reducing health disparities, the project’s overall goal is to improve the health of all Americans.

After pulling together a group of historically Black institutions with notable experience in minority-focused health research, Hampton University officials have announced that the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities is awarding the university a five-year, $13.5 million grant to lead an HBCU consortium to combat and reduce health disparities in minority men. The HBCUs partnered with Hampton are Jackson State University, Clark Atlanta University, Howard University, North Carolina A&T State University and St. Augustine’s University.

The Hampton University Men’s Health Initiative has identified six core areas on which it will implement comprehensive solutions to health disparities that disrupt and cut short the lives of minority males, particularly that of African-American men. The initiative is focusing on prostate cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, melanoma in Hispanics and violence prevention. The researchers will be implementing a sustainable collaborative research model in each of the six areas to bring about improved health outcomes for minority men.

“The incidence of prostate cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and these other conditions have been particularly devastating in the Black community,” says Dr. William Harvey, the president of Hampton University. “This initiative will focus on four approaches to combatting health disparities – research, education, training, and intervention outreach.”

Hampton officials say that while the initiative is focused on reducing health disparities, the project’s overall goal is to improve the health of all Americans.

Harvey explained that the consortium was developed such that initiative’s research and clinical work would benefit from the particular strengths of the individual schools. For example, Harvey noted that Hampton, after having developed its widely-acclaimed $225 million Proton Therapy Institute as an innovative approach to fighting cancer, is well-positioned to focus on prostate cancer, which disproportionately affects minority men. According to the American Cancer Society, Black men have a 59 percent higher incident rate of prostate cancer than White men.

In another example, Jackson State University has developed a strong reputation for its health disparities research and intervention around cardiovascular disease, according to officials. Harvey notes that the Howard University psychology department will be playing a key role with violence prevention and that Clark Atlanta University researchers have been heralded for their cancer therapy research.

“I believe in working together to emphasize the collective power that HBCUs can exert to solve problems. This initiative is not about Hampton, but what HBCUs can accomplish when they bring their respective strengths to a project and work together,” he says.

Terone Green, an expert of minority health care programs and the national director for alliance development with the Sullivan Alliance, credits Harvey with putting together what Green sees as an impressive coalition of HBCUs. The Hampton initiative “plays well into the position Dr. Harvey has taken as it relates to issues around African-Americans, especially men, after leading the successful development of proton beam center,” he says.

“This [initiative] is a natural extension of what [Harvey’s] attempting to do to address health disparities,” notes Green.

He adds the grant award is significant because it’s unusual to see the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities awarding a grant as large as the one that’s going to the Hampton University Men’s Health Initiative. “Typically, what you see are multi-year grants in the $5 million to $6 million range,” says Green, who has served on the institute’s advisory board.

Dr. Raymond Samuel, a Hampton University chemical engineering professor and the initiative’s co-principal investigator, says researchers with the initiative will focus on planning in the first year, which has just gotten underway. The initiative is receiving $1.5 million in its first year and $3 million annually in subsequent years, according to Samuel.

“We’re really at the stage of putting together an infrastructure and administrative system for the consortium,” Samuel said.

He explained the federal award “is not the biggest grant that’s been awarded to us, but it’s the largest one to focus on biomedical research.” Hampton University’s track record in scientific and technical research has largely resulted from university work in physics, astronomy, and atmospheric sciences, Samuel noted.

Older Men, Minorities Report Lower Rates of Treatment for Depression LOS ANGELESOlder men, African Americans and Latinos with clinical depression reported significantly lower rates of treatment than other participants surveyed in a national study led by UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute researchers. Overall, less than one in three depressed older adults studied had received potentially effective treatment […]

Stanford Under Federal Investigation For DiscriminationSTANFORD, Calif. — Stanford University is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Labor for potential violation of federal affirmative action law and gender discrimination.The federal investigation was prompted, in part, by statements made by the university’s outgoing provost, Condoleezza Rice who has repeatedly expressed reservations about the goals and […]